Kirstin Chen Ventures Out Of Singapore With Novel Set In 1950s Maoist China

The scene is Maoist China in the 1950s. A family flees its home on Drum Wave Islet, an island off the coast of mainland China, as they face persecution from the authorities and bear the consequences of a heartbreaking decision. It is a time of uncertainty, set against the tumultuous political landscape of the Cultural Revolution.

These circumstances seem to have little to do with a Singaporean born almost three decades later, but they form the backdrop of Kirstin Chen’s sophomore novel, “Bury What We Cannot Take,” published in March.

Chen was hooked on the novel’s theme after listening to her friend’s story about his family. His father, the inspiration behind the novel’s 12-year-old Ah Liam, saw his grandmother hammering a portrait of Chairman Mao while his aunt (who inspired Ah Liam’s nine-year-old sister, San San) watches on. In the novel, Ah Liam reports his grandmother’s act to the Chinese authorities, which leads to a terrible chain of events with far-reaching effects on his family. “All the stuff he told me is in chapter one. Everything else I imagined. The setting and characters are mine but the premise, which is so compelling, is really a gift,” says Chen in an interview with Forbes Asia.

Prisca Ang

Kirstin Chen's sophomore novel, "Bury What We Cannot Take", explores a family's ties as its members navigate the complex landscape of 1950s Maoist China.

The novel is a breakthrough for the San Francisco-based author, who traveled to the U.S. for boarding school when she was 15. Chen, now 36, remained in the U.S. to attend Stanford University. Her first novel, “Soy Sauce for Beginners,” came out in 2014. Set in contemporary Singapore, it tells the story of a young woman who returns home to manage her family’s artisanal soy sauce business.

“Bury What We Cannot Take” is completely different, as she knew close to nothing about the time period and had to research it extensively, says Chen. She also interviewed her aunt, who had lived on Drum Wave Islet, or Gulangyu. “I had never undertaken a research project of that scale. One of the biggest challenges was convincing myself that I knew enough to stop researching and start writing. I feel like I could have done ten years of research and there would still be more to know.”

Chen grappled with the fear that she wasn’t “Chinese enough” to tell the story because she was from a predominantly English-educated background in very Westernized Singapore, she says. The last people in her family to live in China were her great-grandparents. “For all those reasons, I felt a little bit insecure going into the project.”

However, once she started writing the novel, she realized it was closer to home than it seemed. Her mother would not have been much older than San San, and her aunt had run away from home at the age of 15 to return to China. “By the end I realized this wasn't a historical book… it's more related to my family story than I ever thought,” says Chen, who read and signed her book in New York in April.